The death of pluralism

Grammatically speaking that is.

Rodney Hide, leader of ACT, a New Zealand political party and junior coalition partner in the Government.

In one breath, he said:
"That's our parliamentary rules"
"There's a lot of people say that"

Not that many people noticed....


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This will take a while...

Sitting in Auckland airport, trying to make sense of the PA announcements.
Appears that a flight's been cancelled and passengers are requested "to proceed to the Chicken Hulp Disc"

Thought it was the avian equivalent of a buggered vertebrae until I twigged it....


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I don't know about you.....

...but this looks staged to me.....

Glad it wasn't me

I have a feeling that this is somehow going to turn out to be my fault.

Famous potter Petra Bittl gifted Mrs jb "something to go with the piece you bought last year" for her birthday.

"Much too extravagant" protests Mrs jb.

"Well, it WAS your 65th birthday" she said.

Only 4 years out, Petra........

Glad it wasn't me.....

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Roland

My Saab 9.3 is 11 years old, has going on for a quarter of million kilometres on the clock and is worth sod all and threepence.

It looks like new. Inside and out.

All our cars look new. Always have. Always will.

The exception is the tractor (1957 Fergusson FE35), but that's a project.

Given that it's worth sod all and threepence, I've given up giving the local Saab dealers close to $100 an hour to work on it.

I've got Roland.

Roland was recommended by a junk yard/repair shop/very dodgy outfit. who couldn't fix an airconditioning problem.

Neither could Roland at first (it was so obscure that even Saab was stumped), but he reckoned that if he couldn't fix it, he couldn't charge me for 2 hours of work and flushing the airconditioning.

So he gets all the work on both Saabs

Which is mostly just an annual service.

Plus fixing the SID display when it loses pixels "Didn't take long, not worth writing a bill" or fixing the ABS module "You did the research, give me 30 minutes labour" or fixing the airconditioning control unit "New costs €150 from Saab, but I know this guy with a wrecked Saab 9.3, you can get it for €20"

Yesterday beats it all, though.

Grinding noise from the engine compartment a couple of weeks back.
Not a function of engine speed = not the engine ingesting itself.
Not a function of road speed = not the suspension
Not the exhaust (despite what the wimmen said)
Acrid smell.

Not good.

I thought maybe the airconditiong - compressor, maybe.
THAT went in Year 3, Saab picked up most of the (€800...) bill and the grinding sounded familiar.

So we went under the car and Roland's saying "There's a whistling noise when I turn on the a/c, can you hear it?"

I'm old. I can maybe hear frequencies between 5000 and 12,000Hz, so no, I can't hear it.

"I think you're right though" he says" I think it's the compressor bearing" and goes straight into "but-what-we-can-do" mode, which involves routing the drivebelt away from the compressor (which means no aircon, but who cares?) and putting in a tensioner and it'll be as cheap as chips.

So I zip over on the bike yesterday to pick up the car.

"Bit of a problem" he says " I was maneuvering the car and didn't pull the handbrake on far enough and it rolled back and dinged the rear bumper. I've polished it out, but you can still see a mark. Have a look and if you're not happy, I'll respray it for you"

Go out and have a look. It's THERE but barely discernible.

Go back in and say "Well, we can let Mrs jb drive it for a week and then ask her where the ding came from...where's the bill?"

"There isn't one" he says "I'm just happy you're cool with it - we're quits"

The usual argument "but you bought some spares..." "well yeah, but only a drive belt" "how about the labour?" "really easy job. LOOK, I don't WANT anything"

What on earth do you do with a guy like this?

Apart from treasure him

Brain dead

At the market.
3 items @ €0.90 and 1 @ €1.35
In my head: €4.05.
Callow yoof needs a calculator and 2 attempts to come up with something different.

Bloody hell....

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A gaggle of geese, a nest of rabbits... #10

..a shitload of postcards

Classic Lowry

I didn't even know you liked beer

Almost as good as Sir Michael Spears

"No-one has yet drowned"

The response of the Nelson City Council's parks operations co-ordinator to a request from a parent for childproof fencing around a municipal pond in the city.

A month later, a 21 month old drowns.

The story here in the Nelson Mail

She's back!

Fish and Chips is back from vacation, it appears.

Good thing too - I've been missing stuff like this...

mRNA-seq with agnostic splice site discovery for nervous system transcriptomics tested in chronic pain

That's the way it should be...

Oh, you mean he killed someone else?

Shit, I thought New Zealand had finally introduced effective punishment...